


Careless

by garglyswoof



Series: Unidentified [4]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Finally, Prompt Fill, frank clues in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 05:49:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17595629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garglyswoof/pseuds/garglyswoof
Summary: Karen wishes she could care less.She doesn't.





	Careless

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt list: "sliberosis - the desire to care less about things"

She’s been walking a lot, afternoons where she steps away from the still-fresh paint of the Nelson, Murdock and Page sign on the office door. Walks as the city lies in golden light, letting her thoughts keep pace with the pavement. It feels safer in the sun, somehow, like thoughts are easier to lay bare then, instead of night when sleep is a cruel joke of an idea. She walks along Chelsea Piers, through the wind that whips through the streets of Midtown, edges Central Park; the circuit grows wider as the days pass - down to Soho, East Village, walking to reconcile the pieces of her heart, walking to try to forget.

So today when she cuts through Chinatown, crossing the bridge and finding herself at a familiar park on the water’s edge in Brooklyn, she curses under her breath even as she sits down on the bench, staring straight across the East River to the jagged rise and fall of Manhattan.

Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? Despite your best intentions, despite what your brain says, there are the pieces in you that refuse to listen, that you have to root out of your thoughts and feelings and find a way to force into line. Is it really a surprise that her heart hasn’t gotten the memo yet?

It’s the same bench as months ago; a bit of closure, right? To form a new memory over the old. Cauterize the wound as the early rush-hour begins its frustrated march across the bridge. She exhales a shaky breath, raises her hand to her mouth to choke off the sob that’s beginning to form.

She’d put it all on the line like she’d done so many times before and at what point - at what freaking point - would she learn? But even as it chokes her, the thought feels false, because Frank isn’t Matt, he isn’t freaking Todd, he is definitely not her father. She knows it, she knows it as deeply as she knows that Matt is an asshole, but someone worth her friendship all the same. But knowledge doesn’t take the pain away, that hopeful rise and plummeting fall of seeing Frank in that hospital.

She sits there on the bench, wishing that she could care less but knowing she can’t, taking sips from the glass water bottle she’s miraculously kept intact in her satchel.

The slow movement of a crane - New York is perpetually under construction - holds her unseeing stare and the shape of her thoughts, and when the bench shifts next to her she’s irritated. She darts that quick glance to determine how safe the situation is, how quickly she needs to move, and it’s Frank sitting there, cap pulled low over forehead, his profile striking as a Roman coin.

“Frank? What are you doing here?”

When he looks at her, it’s almost sheepish, and it’s so incongruous on that face with its mottling of fresh bruises that she almost laughs.

“Spotted you on Canal, followed you the rest of the way. You’re crap at spotting a tail, Karen.”

“Yeah well I’m good with a gun so hopefully that evens things out.”

He laughs at this, eyes crinkling at the corners and god she wishes she could care less. When he looks back, he must see something in her face, expectant and aggrieved, and his smile drops.

“At the hospital-” he pauses, his eyes tracking something on the water. “Amy, she-” He stops again, turns to face her, though he still can’t meet her eyes. “We weren’t done.”

It’s her own laugh then; a short thing, laced with bitterness. “Weren’t we?”

When her gaze returns to his face, he is finally looking at her. Not avoiding her stare, not glancing everywhere but at her, not darting his eyes about.

That divot between his brows lies uncreased. She’s seen this look before, a soft confusion that spreads across his features, something lax in the set of his mouth, something terrifyingly vulnerable that her heart recognizes. She steels herself against it.

“I don’t think we ever will be,” he says finally, in a voice roughened beyond his normal gravel rasp. His eyes dart away for a moment, but arrow back - it’s like he’s forcing himself to look, to really look at her, and the contrast to that day in the hospital means something to Karen.

“Karen.” He’s the first to touch her this time, breaking the unspoken order of their relationship, and that means something too. She glances down, looks at his palm engulfing hers, feels the rough scrape of his calluses across her knuckles.

He repeats her name and she looks back up, watches as he shifts on the bench as if settling into a story he’s about to tell. “I can’t really say it right, not in the way I want to. It’s just…how,” he ducks his head and his gaze magnets back, “how can I say it’s ok? How can I be that selfish?”

“That’s not selfish,” she says softly, and clears her throat, because what she has to say isn’t soft. “Selfish was you in that hospital room, deciding for both of us.” A block away, the city teems, and someone lays on their horn as if to punctuate her words. “Frank I- let’s… these are feelings neither of us asked for.” Her voice falters and she squares her shoulders, because Frank is not her father he is not Matt he is not Todd and she trusts her instincts. “I just…I know it’s not just me. And i’m not trying to get in the- the way of what you do, or what you’re going through, or how you deal with the demons that haunt you.”

She’s gathering steam, the words training from her throat when he interrupts.

“Wait.” Her heart lurches, because honestly, she can’t take it again.

“Karen. You know, you’re so freakin’ brave, you know that?” She doesn’t feel it right now, staring down at his sweeping thumb, the crease between thumb and forefinger. “Here I am, I’ve got my mission, nothing in my way, nothing flowing in my veins but rage, and then there’s this girl, this girl that gives me my family back, for just a moment, gives it to me, you know? Freaking breaks into my house for it, no less.” She spots the crinkles at the corners of his eyes from the corner of hers. Her lips twitch. “Here’s this girl - this woman, sorry, Maria’d bust my balls for that - and she is looking at a killer and you know,” she looks up and lets his eyes swallow hers, “you see something no one else does, and you ignore every warning I give, and you won’t let go though a part of me wants you to. So bad.”

He pauses for a moment and his hand stills on hers as the sky darkens and the horizon blooms orange across the water. She pulls in her lips, wets them, and asks the question. “And what about the other part of you?”

“Look, I, I don’t know what this is.” He gestures between them with his free hand. “Or how it makes sense, you know? I…I don’t think it’s selfish to not want to involve you in this effed-up life of mine, yeah? It’s like…how,” his voice rasps wordlessly for a moment, “how do we fit between the bullets?”

“We figure it out, Frank,” her voice is almost frustrated because she is, she is at this rollercoaster. “But first, I want you to know a few things about me.”

His eyes narrow, studying her, and some realization shifts inside of him. “Yeah, yeah of course. I’d like that.” He laughs. “God I feel…of course Karen. I don’t know you. Just feels like I do. Goddamn. I’m sorry.”

He says it like a revelation, his apology, as the city shifts from day to night, the ilghts winking on in the skyscraper firmament. He apologizes, and it means something.


End file.
